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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25164289">Aisling (Cara)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaz_Langston/pseuds/Kaz_Langston'>Kaz_Langston</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anti-Witcher Sentiments, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, Light Angst, M/M, POV Outsider</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 04:13:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,757</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25164289</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaz_Langston/pseuds/Kaz_Langston</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>From the outside, a witcher and his bard can look like something they’re not, and a young barmaid fears the worst.</p>
<p>Jaskier and Geralt’s relationship can be read how you like (gen or m/m).</p>
<p>No assault is seen or even explicitly discussed, and it doesn't happen to either main character.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia &amp; Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>516</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Aisling (Cara)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Cara - Irish for friend</p>
<p>Aisling - An Irish name meaning dream or vision, and a form of Irish language poetry where a beautiful woman (representing Ireland) laments and hopes for better things, or in some cases represents spring and love.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Wiping down the tables after a quiet night, Cara fair jumps from her skin when the tavern door crashes open and the night tumbles inside, a flurry of wind and rain chasing a dark-cloaked form through the doorway.</p>
<p>The cloak covers something in the man's arms, but then he tosses his head to knock back the hood and she sees his eyes, bright gold things that look more animal than man, and terror grips her heart.</p>
<p><em>Witcher</em>.</p>
<p>Monstrous beast of a tarnished man, and she's near-alone, only Stefan the innkeep around, and he's like as not busy ploughing Laoise and not paying attention to any sound but her fuck-noises.</p>
<p>"Girl," the man snarls, and oh his voice is rough and coarse as the rest of him, and she flinches back.</p>
<p>Goddess bless, by some miracle Stefan's kept his cock where it should be and comes through the doorway with his cudgel in hand. "Evening, witcher."</p>
<p>How can he keep his head when faced with such a man? But then it's different for him, he's a man and not some slight girl, though she thinks even with the cudgel he'd not stand a chance if the witcher struck out with a sweep of those tree-trunk arms.</p>
<p>"A room."</p>
<p>The cloak falls away a little more, and Cara brings a hand to her mouth in horror, for in the beast's arms lies a youth, fresh into manhood, pale and unaware, a bruise across his cheekbone and rainwater-slick hair clumped across his brow.</p>
<p>The witcher glances at her, and she realises she must have made some sound and shrinks back. Stefan looks too, and his eyes soften at her the way they often do when he sees her flinches, but they go hard and flat again as he looks back at the witcher. His fingers are white around the cudgel. "I won't have you carrying on with a green lad like that. If there's going to be that sort of behaviour, better to go to the brothel."</p>
<p>It's only because she's watching so close that she sees it, a quick-sharp flicker of surprise and anger in the beast's face. Not used to denials, she supposes, and shudders.</p>
<p>"The <em>room</em>. How much?"</p>
<p>Stefan's wavering, weighing what he knows to be right against the fear of denying this mountain of a man what he wants, and Cara knows the price of denial, knows it all too well, and can't fault him for his wavering.</p>
<p>"Three hundred for the night. And I'll have you out if you keep others up with goings-on." It's three times the price of a normal room, but the man-beast bares his teeth and nods.</p>
<p>Cara could weep, and Stefan's face as the witcher strides past makes her heart ache, but they both know there's nothing to be done, cudgel or none.</p>
<p>She hates herself for thinking perhaps the lad will sleep through it, perhaps his injuries will carry him away, like she sometimes hoped hers had done, but then Stefan wraps his big arms around her and hushes her against his chest, and she takes a deep breath of his ale-and-sweat scent and is well, or well enough, which is the same thing.</p>
<p>"I'm sorry, lass," Stefan says, and she thanks the goddess once again for sending him to her, or her to him, or whichever it was.</p>
<p>She pats his chest and wipes unshed tears from her eyes. "I'll look in on him, if I can."</p>
<p>"Careful, Cara, careful. Don't give him... be <em>careful</em>."</p>
<p>She leans up, daring and presses a kiss to his whiskery worry-creased cheek, and he looks at her with that sad-softness again.</p>
<p>*-*-*-*-*</p>
<p>From the corridor Cara watches and waits, skirts rucked up past what's decent in case she has to run, light feet on the wooden floors knowing every treacherous floorboard, but when the monster leaves he turns the other way down the corridor and doesn't look back.</p>
<p>Her heart beats rabbit-fast as she nudges the door open, knowing the lift it needs to stop the creak, the one that's on all the doors so she can hear when people come and go, for all they get complaints about it. Inside there's a candle lit and the fire low but hot like it's been burning for hours, and the lad laid out on the bed as though sleeping on a summer's night, blanket covering his decency or his smallclothes.</p>
<p>She's not got long, not when that bastard's surely only gone to the stables to check on his beautiful horse, but the sight of the young man is hypnotising, pale and hairy across his chest, storm-blue bruises ugly stains across his handsome cheek and down his side, and she can't help but stare. She'd not known a man could look vulnerable, not like that, not half naked and slimly muscled and sleeping.</p>
<p>Cara doesn't hear the door open, doesn't hear the tell-tale creak (sneaky and wicked, he is, hearing her warning and silencing it to creep up on her) but the avalanche growl of him flings her forward and then desperately back, away from the bed to scurry into a corner</p>
<p>"What are you doing?"</p>
<p>He's even taller in this room, cramped by the ceiling and his back to the fire, only candles to light the blade of his jaw and catch the hollows of his animal eyes, and his pale hair painted near as gold as his eyes.</p>
<p>"I- I-" Goddess save her, save the both of them!</p>
<p>Knees knocking beneath her skirts the goddess gives her strength to stand, to put herself between this monstrous man and the poor lad where he lies so defenseless, but the witcher's face is suddenly twisted in anger. "Get out!"</p>
<p>That shout rips the air from her lungs and he must have rattled the rafters with it, and she can hardly take a breath until she's safely in her own room with the lock thrown, that clever one that can't be picked nor magicked and that had cost her nearly three months' wages.</p>
<p>Cara doesn't count the hours she sits there, shaking and ashamed, but after that she grits her teeth. No more foolishness, now, not with that poor man upstairs.</p>
<p>*-*-*-*-*</p>
<p>She's waiting tables the next morning when the monster and the youth come down the stairs. The witcher stands close, as though worried the man will run, though he moves so stiffly she can't see how there's any chance of that.</p>
<p>Monster, she thinks, trying not to scowl across the room at him. <em>Beast</em></p>
<p>The man - Jas, he growls once, or is that some cruel epithet she doesn't know the meaning of, for his face twists unhappily when the witcher uses it - spoons porridge into his mouth with a shaking hand, and before he's finished the bowl the monster grabs his shoulder and squeezes, just hard enough to be a reminder, and leans down to whisper something in his ear.</p>
<p>Jas doesn't react, but there's a careful blankness - she knows that blankness, wore it herself, don't let them see what you're thinking, keep it hidden - and he just nods once, sword-edge sharp.</p>
<p>The witcher turns, but before he reaches the door he casts keen eyes over the room and meets her gaze with some strange expression. She looks away, doesn't look up as the tavern door creaks open and shut.</p>
<p>Cara waits just long enough to be sure he's not tricking her like last night, then scurries behind the bar where she's stashed her offering.</p>
<p>The other man, bruised and stiff, is still eating his porridge, stirring it unhappily, though she knows Stefan put in extra cream, saw him do it before she could even ask. When she crouches down beside him, bag in hand, he looks at her with hooded eyes, blinking slow and sleepy.</p>
<p>She sets the bag down beside him on the bench, pushes it close. "There's food, and waterskins, it'll see you for a few days. Willow bark too, for your head and the rest of your aches." He looks at her blankly. "You've not run now he's left - if you need help, I know the madam down the road, and she knows people, they'll help, I promise."</p>
<p>"Oh," he says, handsome bruised face twisting into something soft and open and kind. "Oh, dear heart, no, it's nothing like that, I swear it."</p>
<p>He lifts a hand, the knuckles of it scraped and glistening with some tincture, and gently cups her cheek. She doesn't flinch but he still pulls away, summer sky eyes sharp and canny. "But you're very sweet, to care so for a stranger."</p>
<p>"I'm mistaken, then?" Oh she hopes so, hopes there's more to it than a brute carrying his captured victim to an inn for a night.</p>
<p>"Very much so. He's my friend, for all his faults, and he'd never hurt me." He pauses, then leans in like he's whispering a secret. "Did you say you have willow bark?"</p>
<p>She almost feels foolish, but he's so very kind, and so grateful, and when he leaves there's a warmth in her chest. A handful of crowns, too, slipped back in her hand like a magic trick as he gives her the bag and tells her to give it to the next soul who needs it.</p>
<p>*-*-*-*-*</p>
<p>"You'll never guess what happened while you were out getting supplies," Jaskier says, licking honey from his fingers. If he gets it on the saddle Geralt will probably make him lick it clean, injuries or no, and the damn thing's probably seen more years than Jaskier himself, so he'd really rather not spill. He doesn't wait for Geralt to respond, though the steadying hand on his leg tightens a little as proof he's listening. "One of the barmaids came up to me while I breakfasted, a vision of dark beauty and mystery, and she-"</p>
<p>"Curled hair, skinny thing?" It's odd seeing a frown on Geralt's face from horseback, he's used to seeing it looming over him instead.</p>
<p>"Oh, you saw her?"</p>
<p>"Hmm. Last night."</p>
<p>"Well that explains an awful lot - what did you say to the poor girl, honestly Geralt, you can't go around scaring the shit out of pretty little maidens like that, you've got a proper reputation to maintain now. Poor darling, looked like she'd seen a ghost. Anyway, she came up to me with this bag, all filled with food, and a spare shirt too, said she'd help however she could..."</p>
<p>Jaskier's chatter fills the morning air as they amble down the path, damage soothed by witcher caring and willowbark.</p>
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